As he looked around at what he remembered to be a thriving underwater ecosystem just a decade prior, Terry Tamminen was shocked at what he saw.
“Nothing was there,” he says. “The kelp was all gone. Everything was dead.”
When Tamminen was a child, his family moved from Wisconsin to California, and it didn’t take long before he had completed a scuba-diving certification course. After years of diving all over the world, returning to the part of the ocean that had been his “classroom” just 10 years earlier opened his eyes to how quickly the underwater world was being desecrated.
“I sent my $25 donation to the Sierra Club and hoped they would do the work,” he says.
But the urge to do more didn’t subside with a donation; Tamminen decided to commit his life and career to saving the ocean, combating climate change, and forging a new path ahead. From leading climate initiatives in the state of California under Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship to helping regrow kelp in the bays of California, Tamminen’s positive impact on the environment is as vast as the ocean itself.
Today, as president and CEO of AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles, an ocean-focused research and development campus that brings together science, business, and conservation education, Tamminen gets to change how global leaders approach sustainability, both in the waters and on the land.
“AltaSea is helping drive aquaculture initiatives, transforming how the state approaches renewable energy, and working with world-changing startups in the blue economy,” he says.
Tamminen speaking at Alibaba CoCreate Conference
BOOTS ON THE GROUND … AND IN THE SEA
Tamminen’s first true venture into the blue economy was also his first venture into the nonprofit space. He started Santa Monica BayKeeper, the seventh program of its kind in the country. The organization’s main goals were threefold: Raise awareness of how pollution was impacting the oceans, sue the main offenders—usually corporations and illegal fishing vessels—and patrol the waters to prevent harmful activities.
Since he lived on a houseboat, and now worked on patrolling the marina and restoring the ecosystem, Tamminen saw that much of what was causing damage to the ocean was waste from corporations, and as damaging as it was on an environmental level, that waste was wreaking havoc from a business perspective.
“Excess waste costs businesses money. I realized if we could reduce that waste, we could help the marine life that lived in the ocean and propel economic goals forward,” he says. “It was at that point that I realized the economy was the answer, not the enemy.”
The impact of being a waterkeeper went even further; he met and fell in love with his wife while living on that houseboat. They’ve been married for 18 years. “She was an environmental campaigner for Heal the Bay, which was a nonprofit that helped set the policies that we enforced,” he says.
Tamminen with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at AltaSea
DIFFERENT POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES, SHARED GOALS
Many business leaders and government officials think of sustainability initiatives as a waste of resources that negatively impact financial outcomes, so Tamminen faced his fair share of pushback as he tried to get larger audiences to understand that the environment and the economy would both benefit from the work he was so passionate about. One person who was willing to listen to Tamminen’s fresh approach was bodybuilding-champion-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“We had different political ideologies, but when we really sat down to talk, we realized that the things we wanted to do for the environment were the same things needed for a healthy economy,” Tamminen says. Schwarzenegger listened, learned, and decided to bring Tamminen into the fold to build the environmental action plan for his campaign. With lofty environmental goals and a well-structured plan to achieve those goals, Schwarzenegger’s campaign was successful.
After the campaign, Tamminen thought his work with the governor would come to an end, but to his surprise, things were just getting started. After congratulating him on the win, Tamminen joked with the governor, saying, “I’m not sure if you know what you’ve bitten off, but at least you have a great environmental action plan to implement.” To which Schwarzenegger replied, “No I don’t, you do.”
In a matter of weeks, Tamminen was appointed Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA). No stranger to uncharted territory, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work.
“We achieved every single thing that was in that action plan,” he says.
The plan he authored became the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. The main goal of the state law was to cut emissions in half by 2020. “We reached those targets two years early, in 2018,” he says.
Tamminen with John Kerry and Leonardo DiCaprio
STAR-STUDDED PARTNERSHIPS CONTINUE
After a successful run as head of CalEPA, Tamminen was promoted to cabinet secretary. He oversaw the entire state government, partnered closely with Schwarzenegger, and made an impact that is still seeing returns today.
“We wanted to transition away from fossil fuels into more renewable energy, so we created the Million Solar Roofs Initiative,” he says. In just 10 years, that initiative led to a million rooftops participating in the program and generated 9 million gigawatts of power. From an economic perspective, it created an entire industry and job market in the state.
Tamminen’s name began to hold some star power on its own. Suddenly, he was the go-to thought leader for how to roll out large, complex environmental projects. He began working with notable philanthropists who shared his commitment to the planet, including Leonardo DiCaprio. For years, Tamminen worked hand in hand with DiCaprio, helping him stand up his world-renowned foundation.
“When we first started working together, he was giving $1 million of his own money each year,” Tamminen says. “By the time we finished, $25 million per year was being invested in the cause.”
Tamminen speaking at AltaSea groundbreaking ceremony
ALTASEA: SPLASHING INTO L.A.’S PORT
When it comes to the environment, everything is linked, and no one understands that better than Tamminen. His ability to simplify complex problems, build actionable plans, and connect people perfectly position him to lead AltaSea, a revolutionary organization that’s impacting every facet of ocean conservation in California and beyond.
Located in the Port of Los Angeles, AltaSea’s 35-acre campus is a hub for the blue economy. It houses innovative startups and businesses developing cutting-edge technologies; it provides workforce training to support the expansion of the blue economy; and it serves as an educational campus to engage students, conservationists, and everyone in between in key climate initiatives.
AltaSea has aquaculture companies that are working to regenerate species, researchers figuring out how to grow kelp as a commercial product, policy experts honing in on new renewable-energy methods, and a coalition of universities and companies to capture carbon from the ocean. There are even companies developing underwater robotics, sensors, and mapping solutions.
For Tamminen, AltaSea represents a full-circle moment in his own career.
“I started out fighting polluters and trying to grow kelp in the Santa Monica Bay,” he says, “and now I get to work with some of the brightest minds in this amazing facility to figure out how to build a more sustainable future.”
Today’s discourse around climate change and sustainability can feel discouraging, but in Tamminen’s view, now is hardly the time to give up.
“In some cases, we have hit a tipping point. But just think about how much can change in a decade. If we keep working toward a healthier planet, we can have such a major impact,” he says. “Don’t give up. Don’t lose hope. Keep innovating.”
